You may have read Mitch Albom’s novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. With a wink and a nod to Mr. Albom, I now present The Five People You Meet in Hell. Sorry, it’s a blog not a novel – maybe later.

Okay, you screwed up and you know it. You’re going to hell. No sweat, you say. You’ve many friends in hell, so you won’t be lonely. True. The company you keep puts you in hell. Here’s a clue; your enemies are there too, waiting for you. Here’re the five people who’ll meet you at the gates of hell when you arrive:

1. Your ex-girlfriend/ boyfriend and/or ex-spouse. Remember how you treated on your significant other? You cheated. You lied about it. You confessed and promised never to do it again. Then you cheated again and lied again. You thought you got away this last time. Your ex knows what you did and will confront you in hell. What you don’t know is that you caused your ex to have a crisis about his/her sexuality. He/she blamed him/herself more than you. Your ex went into therapy. Finally, he/she had a sex change operation. Your ex then joined a commune to “find him/herself.” In a freak accident, your ex smoked some loco weed that looked like marijuana. It was fatal. With his/her dying breath, he/she swore revenge on you.

2. Your best friend from high school/college? You remember your best friend? You two vowed to be best friends forever. That was until you stabbed your BF in the back. You stole your BF’s girl/guy. You did it without a thought of how you hurt him/her. What you don’t know is that your BF had trust issue after that. He/she never trusted anyone again. He/she became very bitter and mean. With no friends, your BF sat alone at home watching reruns of Gillian’s Island. It wasn’t cable or satellite, because your BF did not trust the installer to show up at all. In a freak accident, a flock of pigeons killed your BF while your he/she was feeding them.

3. Your old boss. You do remember your old boss? The one that didn’t give you that bonus or promotion. He said you didn’t achieve the goals set for you. He said you wasted time playing games on the computer and taking naps in the stockroom. It was all true. What you don’t know is that he didn’t get a bonus or promotion either. Your failure caused him to fail too. Eventually, the company fired him for poor performance. He couldn’t get another job because he couldn’t get a referral. The industry blackballed him. He became homeless and wandered around aimlessly – without goals. In a tragic accident, he was cooked to death due to a malfunction in the heating grate he was sleeping on. Investigators found your name scribbled on the side of his cardboard box with the words, “I’ll see you in hell.”

4. Your old school teacher. You must remember your old school teacher – the one you caused to have a nervous breakdown? She was a 30-year veteran but had never met anyone as bad as you. She even told you to your face if you ever go to hell, she would find you and kill you -- again. What you may not know is she gave up teaching and joined a street gang. For several years, she committed drive-by shootings of students. When her eyesight failed, she retired to a rural area in Montana. A black bear killed her when she tried to spank it after it climbed into her apple tree. She thought it was you. The police found a picture of you with your eyes gouged out in her cabin.

5. Jack Hodges. You remember Jack Hodges? Probably not. Everyone remembers him as One-eyed Jack. Your mom always told you not to throw pencils but when Jack asked to borrow a pencil, you threw it. Sure enough, he lost an eye. That was bad enough, but what you don’t know was worst. People bullied and teased One-eyed Jack the rest of his life. He finally had enough and chose a life of crime. One day the police caught up with him, and he died in a hail of bullets. The police said with his dying breath, he said it was all your fault.